I frequently optimize the very essence of the banal tweet. 

So when a stranger reads that anticipating they might glean some insight or wonderful resource, they're likely a combination of disappointed, confused or annoyed. Sure, if you're following me, you might now by now this is par for the course. I will post the occasional mundane tweet but hopefully with a dash of humor or cleverness. Not always, but I try. If I bring a smile to someone once in a while, that means as much to me as sharing a great link or insightful remark. For me it's purposeful, in the same way kibitzing in a staff room or with your friends is purposeful. Some call it social grooming. 

The whole notion of the word "social" and education is difficult to grasp when your experience with learning has been anything but social and void of fun. So rather than have people scared off immediately or having them figure it out eventually, I wondered if there was some way to give people a heads up, a twitter trailer if you will, on what they'll get should they decide to follow me. 

So I created this:

Using ifttt, new followers get a direct message asking them to take 90 seconds to preview the goods. I worried a little if it would come across as spammy or invasive. I still wonder that but I've received some great feedback from people saying they really appreciated the heads up. I even had one person say that really only were interested in the educational side of things and if they found my content too out of place for them, they'd unfollow. Fair enough. 

While I could have had a link to my blog, that to me, seemed spammy. The blog isn't a great reflection of my whole self. My blog is much more about my reflection and thinking as well as dumping ground of thoughts. Twitter is the blur of personal and professional. I realize everyone uses it differently and that's fine. The fact that I used a video and people hear my voice and see my face adds another layer of connection. I much prefer people's faces in their avatars. If I've heard them speak, I read their tweets with their voices, accents and all. 

So a month into this little experiment and I'm pleased with the feedback. It's likely a trade off, with a few people put off, thinking it's a little narcissistic, and maybe it is. But the pay off of potentially more informed and even more connected folks is worth it to me. 

I like design and I like making slides. We know that images can increase recall and understanding. You don't have to agree and this post isn't so much about convincing you of that as it is about the wonderful ways in which collaboration and push back can happen online and actually make things better. 

I've been thinking about the phrase which I have come to dislike, "it's not about the technology" I wanted to capture that idea in an image and began thinking about the way musicians use their instruments. Trying to find a name of someone who would be most recognizable I chose Yo Yo Ma. You don't have to acknowledge if you've never heard of him before because the image I found tells you all you need to know about his love of music and the cello. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/2297224410

​So I began with this:

After I posted it to flickr, Darren chimed in with this suggestion:

Try using a brown similar to the cello instead of yellow. You can use the colour picker in Keynote to do that.

Love the pic, and the quote.

I tried that and responded:

Tried your advice Darren but the brown was too dark, not enough contrast with the background. I used the cello colour for the outline though. I think it's better this way though. Thanks for the feedback. I'll take more if you have it.

I like this. Looks better. Are you using two different fonts? I think I'd stick with one; there's something about the font used in the smaller text that clashes with the larger font.

Fair enough and wise. I tried again.

Darren continued to work at making it better,

Ooo, liking that better; wonder how it looks without white outline of the brown text. Maybe no outline but keep shadow? No shadow?

I played a little with the kerning and positioning until I had it somewhat better.

 Darren Draper joined our conversation with his own ideas. 

Outlined text helps, but a solid bg on the photo would make it stronger. 

Darren then went off and made this:

None of us are graphic designers and will all admit our amateur approach to design. However we all three understand that it does matter and we also enjoy the process. But also the collaboration, the push back and willingness to go back, edit and revise lead to a better product. We joked later about starting a Fix My Slide meme. I don't know about that but I do think there's some simple ideas here for you and your students to seek feedback and find ways to learn with others without the limitations of geography and time. 

Why would you Skype someone involved “in the process?” What process? Who? State legislators? What are they likely to tell a student that can’t be found out in a book or article?

The connections you speak of, now matter how much you yearn for them may be as inauthentic as the task itself. Perhaps they just make a task nobody cares about even more arduous. The “you can use Google ____ or Skype with someone” suggestions have become as automatic and meaningless as when a politician says, “We need to pay teachers more, but hold them accountable.”

To be fair, Gary's comments here were about a broader issue and he goes on to discuss it in more detail. For me the striking comment that “skyping someone in” is often a automatic response to trying to demonstrate you have a classroom that “gets it” gave me pause to think. While I applaud teachers who consider this strategy, without thought and purpose it has no more value or impact that asking a parent or principal to randomly come talk to your class.

But today was a day where I saw Skype used in a truly authentic, powerful and yet quite unassuming way. Much like a pop-in. On the surface it was a class in the small town of Mortlach, Saskatchewan talking with students in Philadelphia, PA. Depending on who you ask that may or not be all that remarkable. The technology was pretty straightforward. A laptop, webcam, and a projector. Call someone up and start talking. Today we can longer attempt to think that that requires any degree of skill. it doesn't. Unless you have some type of fear mongering administrator or IT person weary of Skype, or an unwilling teacher, every classroom can and should have the capability. no training required.

Allow me to deconstruct this for you.

A week ago, Zac Chase of SLA posted a wonderful recording on his blog of some students in a task he calls Story Slam. I listened to it and immediately shared it with my own kids and then thought of a teacher in my district that I knew would love this idea. I shared it with her and without asking permission, I suggested that Zac might be able to have his kids and him Skype in and share this. Which brings us to today.

What I witnessed was a group of students sharing a couple of stories and learning about an idea. The students from SLA talked about what story slam involves, students in Mortlach asked a few questions and in turn shared a story too. A brief pop-in that later led to more conversations about storytelling, inspiration, encouragement and learning in a very natural way.

The untold story here is how a conversation like this can even happen. There's a story of networks and connections, a willingness for one teacher to publicly share practice and student work and another teaching actively seeking a better learning experience for her students. I'll take partial credit for the networking and connections. Part of my job is to connect learners.

The willingness of a teacher to share allows me to even know that this good work and good idea exists. Can I once again implore everyone to please share your work? It matters.

Finally, a teacher who sees herself as a learner, wants great things for her students and is open to ideas that will help them finished the story.

All these pieces were necessary for this to take place. This is no flat classroom type project, no massive project based learning example, just some teachers and students interested in storytelling and a desire to get better.

So Skype, for Skype's sake is just superfluous. This is about way more than technology. It isn't just about technology, but in some ways, it is.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dkuropatwa/4766403166/

]]> http://ideasandthoughts.org/2011/03/28/the-anatomy-of-a-skype-call/feed/ 0 http://ideasandthoughts.org/2011/02/14/so-i-started-this-google-doc/ http://ideasandthoughts.org/2011/02/14/so-i-started-this-google-doc/#comments Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:45:44 +0000 Dean Shareski http://ideasandthoughts.org/?p=1254 That's a joke that many of us who know Alec Couros use to describe a number of experiences he shares as part of being a network learner and crowd sourcing. That become the intro to this video I put together along with the help of about 75 others. The Big Picture Learning Stuff While at [...]]]> That's a joke that many of us who know Alec Couros use to describe a number of experiences he shares as part of being a network learner and crowd sourcing.

That become the intro to this video I put together along with the help of about 75 others.

The Big Picture Learning Stuff

While at first glance it may be seen as simply fun, silly and maybe a wee bit cool but I think there's something more here. Lots of lessons perhaps around being connected may be extracted but I'm thinking about Shirky's notion of Cognitive Surplus.

These 75 people contributed about 5-60 seconds of video. While I know that it may have been a little more time the idea that cumulative of all this content could be pieced together for something of value and meaning is non-trivial.

I wonder if the more difficult the question the greater the strength and/or structure of the organizing principle required to make the results intelligible/useful? Meredith Stewart

in this case, Alec is a compelling personality that has made huge contributions to many. I could have easily found another 75 people and likely could have made 10 videos given his network. But we can certainly come up with compelling ideas that would benefit greatly from the contributions of others. This is why having and building a network, while not easy and magic, offers new possibilities for learning and change.

The Little Picture Technical Stuff

A few people have asked about how I put this all together so here goes:

1. Jon Becker sends out a tweet suggesting I do something for Alec

2. I create this google form.

3. I waited until I had about 70 entries. I'm not sure why I choose that number because as it turned out I had to do some fancy stickhandling to make everyone;s part fit.

4. I send out this email:

5. I was careful not to ask people to submit in a specific format since it may be another barrier for some. As entries came in I used MPEG StreamClip to convert any weird files (Windows type files) I used dropittomedropittome.com for people to send their video clips. This is linked to my dropbox account and was a very efficient way to gather the clips. They ranged in size from 989k to 70MB. Dropittome has a limit of 75 MB which was sufficient even for HD submissions of only a few seconds.

6. I began inserting video as it came in except for the parts with multiple video.

7. By Saturday night I had most of the videos and went at creating the final product in Final Cut Express.

8. I again used MPEG Streamclip to take the full Quicktime video to a more youtube friendly mp4 format.

That's it. I'd really like some more thoughts on the big picture part but am happy to answer questions or discuss the little picture part too.

I recently watched Clay Shirky's newest TED talk based on his book, Cognitive Surplus. The concept of cognitive surplus simply means that in the last century the amount of free we've had has increased and that in the last decade, we've been able to use that surplus not only to consume media but to create it.

Shirky talks about a project called Ushahidi which is a mashup of user generated map which allows people to submit data and information on various events.

Ushahidi, which means "testimony" in Swahili, is a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi's roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The website was used to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phone. This initial deployment of Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, and was the catalyst for us realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be use by others around the world.

Shirky then discusses LOLcats which are as about as far from Ushadidi as you can imagine. They may be funny but they represent the silliness and triviality that exists all over the web. As Shirky suggests, many people wonder if we can bypass the silly and get to the serious. The answer is no. Anytime we want people to create and be social, we will always get both.  

First off, the word silly here is often used interchangeably with stupid. I'll define either as: less than serious, trivial or perhaps even immature. 

Let's have a look at a few examples where Shirky's premise seems to be bang on.

It's hard to think about twitter and not think of it in some ways as stupid or silly. I've done an entire presentation around this concept. If you're an educator and been using twitter for a while, this isn't a big revelation to you but to many this point needs to continue to be made. 

Twitter is full of stupid and silly but it has also saved lives. Twitter is about presence. It's about right now. I've personally seen humanity from the mundane to the fascinating, from literally laugh out loud to near tears. It's about being human and being social.

Forums have been around for as long as we've had the web. Forums run the gambit from sports, knitting, politics, and even lolcats. Generally forums are spaces to ask questions, get answers and have conversations, post documents and the like. Everyone once in a while compassion, caring and kindness become the order of the day. On Reddit, a young man's mother dies and asks if someone might be able to fix a photo of himself and his mother. The response was overwhelming as strangers lent a hand to fix the image. 

For many, youtube is a place to post silly videos. With the billions of videos posted, there's more than a few that would be in that category. But videos like Eric Whitacre's virtual choir represent beauty, creativity and collaboration using technology that until only a few years ago was not available to the masses. The opportunity to create and share opens the door to beauty and wonder.

Blogs have often been seen as nothing more than a cheap and easy way for anyone to publish. That's very true. You can find blogs written by cats, blogs where intimate details of life is shared, that definitely should not! But at the same time, you find blogs written by people with cancer, who tell their story and allow others to experience the pain and share the sorrow that comes with dying. 

Life is serious. Life is also a wee bit silly. It's hard to have one without the other. Social media is simply mirroring life. Media itself has always done this. For us to try and wish the silly away is futile and in many ways ignores what it means to be human. This media creation is so new, so powerful and is being explored in all kinds of interesting ways. So before you dismiss the things you see online as silly or stupid, consider that these creations are part of our evolution of thought and process that can, and has led to some amazing, amazing things.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bahkubean/549310317/

• Learning is social and connected
• Learning is personal and self-directed
• Learning is shared and transparent
• Learning is rich in content and diversity

These concepts for the most part are not discovered and realized in one or two classes. They must be experienced. The first three concepts often take students several weeks before they start to understand them. You can have a look at my course and see how I’m planning to meet these objectives. The idea of learning being social and connected is the most challenging as the building of a learning community requires trust and time to develop. This is where you come in.

I’ve never really pushed twitter on my students but I’ll be asking them to give it a go in this class since I feel it’s likely the fastest way to beging developing a personal learning network.  What I’d like to do is connect them with you within the first week. While I could easily give them some lists and sites to explore on their own,  I’d like to give them the names of educators who will be looking out for them specifically.  By June 1, you should find their names here. If you’d be so kind as to follow them back and make some informal connection with them on twitter, you may be the spark in setting some young teachers on to personal learning networks.

So if you’re willing, please fill in this form and make a connection with some pre-service teachers for the month of June. Thank you in advance.

CBC Spark, devoted a good part of a recent episode to this very idea. You’d do well to listen and subscribe to this thought provoking podcast.

The story of Daemon Fairless building a bike demonstrates the idea that the culture of sharing is becoming really important to many of us. Although Daemon’s interaction at first was distant, he was simply culling information and resources, he wanted to do more, to reach and say thank you. When he wasn’t able to do so, (listen to the segment to find out why) it bothered him. He made a connection and naturally wanted to deepen it. We’re born to share.

The story of Eva Markvoort is a wonderfully sad story about sharing, dying and connection. As she chronicles her life and death with Cystic Fibrosis, you can’t help but be connected to her. Never before have we been able to witness first hand the experiences of strangers and yet develop these oddly deep connections. Outside of the  scripted world of broadcast media, we now share intimate moments with the world in its raw, unfiltered form. Yes, many of us have experienced this first hand with friends and relatives and while certainly this is not a pleasant thing to deal with, it is part of being human and being able to sympathize, empathize, hurt and mourn is part of who we are. I believe those people who followed Eva’s journey are better prepared to deal with it when the time comes.

Finally an amazing story of collaboration and creativity. Eric Whitacre, a composer and conductor creates a virtual choir. The stories people share about how much they love to sing, how they, in some cases are able to join a real choir but are so grateful to be able to share their passion represents in perhaps the purest way what the web is for.

From a personal standpoint, I could list story after story about the power of these connections that go way beyond, “thanks for the great link on twitter” or “I really enjoyed your blog”. If you’re not careful, this stuff gets real personal real fast and that scares many people.

I suppose there are many that look at these emotional stories and say, “I’ve got enough connections without finding any online”. That may or may not be true but I certainly wouldn’t want them to dismiss the power of these connections. Perhaps one or more of these stories can be used to help others understand and see how deep they run.

The technology is now a prothesis of ourselves. Be it a webcam, a microphone or even the written word, technology is becoming a seamless conduit to connecting with others.

Cross posted on the Tech Learning Blog

Earlier this semester I sent out a call for teachers and as usual, they responding wonderfully. I had each of my students working with great teachers around the globe on various projects and instructional practices. From what I’ve seen thus far it’s been a wonderful learning experience.

One of my goals in this class was to help my students gain a deeper understanding of connections and get to know other educators on a personal level. I asked a few of them to allow themselves to be interviewed by my students.

Beth Still, Lee Kolbert, Carolyn Foote, Michelle Bourgeois, Chris Harbeck, Jan Smith, Alan Levine, Jeff Utecht, Maria Knee, Diana Laufenberg, Allanah King, Clarence Fisher, Lisa Parisi, Rodd Lucier, Scott S. Floyd, Kathy Cassidy, Meredith Stewart, Silvia Tolisano, Chris Betcher, Chris Craft, Vicki Davis, Julie Lindsay, Brian Crosby and Jerry Swiatek

These folks took valuable time out of their schedules to answer any and all questions my students fired at them.There is lots to learn from these people.

Inside our NING,  we’ve had some excellent discussions. Unfortunately, most of the came during the latter half of the term and in particular a really juicy one on “Detoxing Students from Grades“.  It was evident from this discussion that many of my students had had great success with the current grading system. After all, they are in education largely because of good grades, why change things? That said, most recognized the flaws in the current system but like any good discussion, offered some excellent counterpoints and were truly engaged in meaningful dialoge. I suddenly realized it might be wise to invite the author of the post, Joe Bower in to defend and agitate the conversation even more. One Direct Message in Twitter and the deal was done.

As has been the case in previous classes I bring in a variety of speakers to share their expertise. This class was largely asynchronous but I did offer some live sessions which we recorded. Karl Fisch, Jeff Utecht, Zoe Branigan-Pipe, Liz Kolb did fabulous jobs sharing the stuff they’re involved with.

Finally, many of you commented on their blogs, engaged with them in twitter and shared ideas with me that supported our learning.

How did anyone do this before the internet?

Tuesday evening I received a call from Rogers about my daughter's account. I was a bit shocked when she said the bill was over $900. After I finished hyper ventilating, had a very focused discussion with my daughter I sent out this tweet.

The truth is the bill over two months as over $900 of which $764.13 was texting. She's had this account for 2 years and when we set up her account we used Rogers My5 plan where you select 5 numbers and get unlimited texting and calls to those numbers. For many teens 5 may not be enough but my daughter only has a few friends that she texts with so this was fine with her. I rarely look at my bill but simply pay online. During the fall, she made a few new friends and a couple of others changed phones. She never gave it a second thought and neither did I.  That was a mistake.

Bill from November:

Bill from December:

While I certainly admit this was our fault, everyone would agree that texting and data charges in general are a bit out of whack. At least 20 others were willing to Retweet my concern. Here's a few of them:

Rogers were made very aware of my issue and responded this morning with a message for me to leave them a phone number to call. Within an hour, a nice man named John called me for more details. He said he'd call me back in a half hour and he did. While we both agreed that technically Rogers was not at fault, he seemed to recognize the absurdity of the amount.  Rogers showed good faith in crediting my account all her texts from November and December.

So what have we learned here? Besides my own learning to increase communication with my daughter, the power of twitter as a super charged communication tool is growing. I can't say for sure that calling customer service wouldn't have had the same result but my gut says it would have been way more difficult, if not impossible. There are lots of stories about how companies are leveraging twitter but customers as well. My questions are:

Is this scalable? Given it appears Rogers has about 3 people monitoring twitter, are they able to provide customer service to all their clients? I purposely did not call customer service to deal with this issue because I had had some contact with Rogers on twitter earlier and they seemed quite responsive.  I thought I'd wait and see if they would respond which they did.  I still don't know if this is scalable.

Do those with social media experience have better social skills? I don't know about you but if you've ever called customer service it seems most of those who answer the phone either have limited ability to have conversations that stray outside their scripts or have little authority to make decisions and you enter a game of phone tag and hand offs. Many times, it's just not worth it. In this case, not only were the people I interacted with quick, they did not pass me off but were able to deal with my issue intelligently and efficiently. John wasn't able to make any decision at the moment but promised to call me back in 30 minutes and he did. The issue was resolved very quickly.

Are there any lessons here for educators? Okay, I realize that may be a stretch and that I might be overstepping my right to compare everything to education but the immediacy of handling a issue, the availability of support and the personalization of the problem seem to be qualities that might make schools better.  I'm trying hard to resist the temptation to make grandiose parallel to schools but I suppose I couldn't help myself. Sorry Dan.

Anyway, it's a good story with a happy ending.

I have a serious problem. As I build presentations I get a clear vision of an idea or concept I want to discuss and I immediately want to visualize it. For better or worse, I gain and make meaning with visuals. To that end I’ve continued to create slides that I reuse and share with others. Fortunately others have shared my passion and created a nice set that others are free to use.

Today’s vision was around filtering. Not that kind of filtering but the kind I’ve discussed here. On more than one occasion, I’ve quoted Clay Shirky’s quote about filter failure. It has been begging to be visualized, at least for me. So I head over to flickr and realize that my vision lacked easily searchable terms. I had envisioned a larger quantity of some item with one item standing out. I tried several search terms and phrases but didn’t find what I wanted.

I turned to twitter.

After this initial request:

Over the next 30 minutes I recieved 20 various image suggestions and 4 other ideas of how to create one. Here they are:

@robletcher offered these two:

http://bit.ly/80zrS?r=td

http://bit.ly/cWAUc

@triareanews suggested these three:

http://images.inmagine.com/img/imagesource/ie236/ie236003.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3533/3931819587_48fdec1fd9.jpg

http://artforprofits.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/stand-out.jpg

Here’s four from @tuchodi

http://www.flickr.com/photos/15202064@N03/2435295029/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hollyclark/450509297/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/unlearn_art/3143041781/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnkay/3924381425/

@bookminder responded to my "needle in the haystack" concept

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/140/335350003_9ca033ba68_m.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanorwood/1046416640/

I nearly went with this one from @dlsio4 who apparently thought of something he had and took the picture on the spot

http://img96.yfrog.com/i/dyu.jpg/

@njtechteacher offered to take a photo of a pile of legos but did suggest this one

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/1804080776/

In the end, Sean Nash gave me six to choose from:

It was that last one that I chose. I could have picked any of the ones offered me and I’m sure you might have chosen differently. The point is that sometimes search doesn’t get it done. Google only goes so far. I needed people to help me sort out my ideas and provide inspiration to reach a satisfying conclusion. I feel badly for folks who don’t have this resource.

Oh by the way, here’s the final product.

As this article states, the problem of attention isn’t particularly new but it certainly is becoming more and more an issue. I remember teachers back in the 1980′s lamenting that they felt they were competing with the MTV generation. MTV seems pretty tame and managable compared to what we are dealing with today.

There aren’t too many days that go by that someone doesn’t ask me about "keeping up". I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers.  Even highly connected and media savvy folks struggle. I struggle with it too, but I have developed a few beliefs, principles that have been helpful to me. I’ll avoid the "top 5" or "best ways to" kind of approach and simply share a few things I think can be helpful in a day of attention deficits.

Filters

As an avid reader of Clay Shirky, the most important lesson I’ve learned from him is about filter failure. As he so eloquently states, it’s not information overload it’s filter failure. We’ve always lived with an abundance of information. Our libraries were filled with books we never read, movies we never saw and conversations we never had. Today, it’s mostly access that makes us feel like it’s too much. In that past we just weren’t as bombarded with information. It took work to go to the library. We had to physically go to see people. Today we carry around our friends and the bulk of human knowledge in our pockets.

While search engines are getting better and better at filtering information, I prefer human powered search. Three places where that happens for me are:

• Delicious I’ve got 29 people whose daily readings come directly to me. I could have 100 people, I could have 5. I can change these 29 people but the point is most of what they find is of interest to me. They are weeding out the junk to give me what they think is noteworthy.
• Google Reader While I subscribe to over 300 sites but the shared portion of Google Reader is the one place I’ll check everyday. 55 people who share the best of what they find in their reading is pretty much all I need.
• Twitter A bit more random but yet potentially very valuable, usually I find great stuff in the conversations. Great links usually get retweeted. If you just check RTs you won’t miss much

Simply the Complex

Information and technology can seem very complex but in the end, it’s important to distill and synthesize. This is why the Common Craft videos are so popular. The LeFevers have taken the time to take some pretty complex technologies and make them simple. One of the ways I attempt to synthesize is to blog. Writing often helps me figure out what is really important. When educators reject using technology in the classroom it’s often because they think it’s too complicated. What they fail to do is determine for themselves what the key ideas are. Digital Storytelling is a great example. There are upteen dozen ways to tell stories but in the end, it’s always about good storytelling. We can spend lots of time examining the intracacies of using media but without a good story, it doesn’t matter. That’s not to say that simple means easy, it just means it doesn’t have to be that hard to understand. Once you have a clear understanding of a topic, you can more easily sift through irrelevant material and noise.

The Hedgehog Principle

Jim Collin’s book Good to Great talks about success among business who deploy the hedgehog principle. In a nutshell it’s the idea of finding your niche or what your focus is and sticking with it. Other companies, in his examples, often get distracted and sidetracked working on things that aren’t part of the core of the company. Instead, he says, find out what you’re good at and stick with it. Now you can argue this idea to some extent but in today’s world, we have to set limits on ourselves. So at some point you have to decide what where you want to develop your expertise and focus your attention. When the latest and greatest tool or resource comes your way, you need to be prepared to pass on it from time to time.  I tend to rely on others to become experts for me. Simply knowing that someone else can be a resource, relieves me from having to know all there is to know. I never would have anyways but limiting the discussions and ideas that I pursue is of great value.

Another resource that I think about a lot when it comes to dealing with choices and focusing on a few things is the great TED talk by Barry Schwartz called The Paradox of Choice. This video has been very important for me in understanding the greatest of our time as well as the challenges. If you haven’t seen it, watch it, or maybe even watch it again. After watching it again, I’m adding another principle that feeds off of this one.

Sometimes Good Enough, is Good Enough

Dave Weinberger talks a lot sometimes settling for "good enough’. That notion rubs many people the wrong way, in particular educators. Most teachers spend hours telling their students to always do their best and while this is certainly a valid trait we want to instill, at times, we have to settle for good enough. When it comes to information, this is very true. When you get 3 million search results, sometimes you settle. Wikipedia is often good enough. It’s not perfect but most of the work we do and understanding we are needing doesn’t have to be. Again, this isn’t always the case but learning how and when to accept good enough is a badly needed skill. I find this particularly true when I’m searching for an image on flickr. With over 3 billion photos finding an image that depicts an idea isn’t usually that hard, finding the perfect one is. Even the image I’m using on this post could be better, but it’s good enough.

Snacking versus Eating

For me, this is most challenging. I could spend a great deal of time snacking on twitter. While there are many quality ideas, resources and conversations shared, it’s still a snack. I hadn’t thought about it in terms of time and money but this quote from the Globe and Mail article explains it:

The cost of one’s time (approximated, for example, by the average wage) relative to the cost of data manipulation, transmission and storage has increased roughly 10-million-fold in just over two generations – a change in relative “prices” utterly without precedent. This, above all, is what is driving the evolution of online behaviour and culture, with profound implications for the production and consumption of knowledge. The primary consequence is the growing emphasis on speed at the expense of depth.

I like speed and like quick but I have to discipline myself to dig deep. I need to be able to move from a 140 character blurb, to a link-filled blog post, to an essay to a book. It’s not easy but like trying to eat well, I know what’s good for me.  I like a bag of chips as much as the next guy but as a steady diet, you need to peel the potatoes and cook them (even better if you can grow them yourself). Sure it takes more time but it’s way better for you in the long run.

No question that how we manage information and how we teach students to manage it will be a huge part of our lives. It is already. I refuse to engage in conversations about "the good old days" in which we usually look back and attribute fonder and more positive memories about the past that we grew up in. It doesn’t really matter anyway. It’s never going to be like that. If, however, you want to discuss timeless values and characteristics that may be forgotten at times, that’s worth my time. I hope these are some timeless principles that I can get better at implementing.

So spend part of Tuesday revamping and cleaning up a few previous presentations to fit into the 20 minute time slot I was given. I was called that afternoon to confirm my appearance with the school counselor and a local police officer. About 30 parents showed up which is pretty typical. While I recall being told about the scheme set up to test kids willingness to add friends in Facebook, I didn’t fully understand the concept until the counselor revealed the plan.  She created a fake profile and tried to get as many students to add her as a friend. The point was to show the parents and students how willing the students were to add strangers. She dropped this bomb on the parents and emphasized the dangerous behaviour shown by the students and how vulnerable they were to predators et. al.  Parents were shocked and their faces were filled with dismay, anger and concern. This went on for about an hour. The police officer who introduced himself to me by stating he didn’t know a lot about computers or the internet proceeded to present for almost an hour on how dangerous the internet was, how it was not policed and was a playground for predators.

And then it was my turn.

I immediately announced that I would be providing a very different perspective and that while I acknowledged some of the dangers and concerns I actually disagreed with many of the points made by the first two speakers. I’ll not post the presentation here, it wasn’t that inspiring but it contained similar content to this one done last summer.  I recognized the lateness of the evening but also wanted to provide hope and balance to a very one sided and what I believed to be somewhat misguided discussion. We had a brief Q and A afterward and many parents expressed their gratitude about hearing another side.

It was a weird evening to say the least. While I recognize the concerns of students acting badly online, these students, I presume are using facebook the way most are: posting a few photos, giving status updates and connecting with friends. I’ll restate this piece of research from the PEW Internet and American Life Project

Our research, actually looking at what puts kids at risk for receiving the most serious kinds of sexual solicitation online, suggests that it’s not giving out personal information that puts kid at risk. It’s not having a blog or a personal website that does that either. What puts kids in danger is being willing to talk about sex online with strangers or having a pattern of multiple risky activities on the web like going to sex sites and chat rooms, meeting lots of people there, kind of behaving in what we call like an internet daredevil.

This completely contradicted what both the police officer and counselor were saying. I stressed that I wanted my kids stuff to be online and that sometimes that included personal things. My 10 year old writes about personal things. That’s what she knows. I don’t worry about her. My own kids see me modeling appropriate behaviour and we talk about what we do online. As Will writes, I want my kids to be found. I also stressed that my concerns continue to revolve around cyberbullying, understanding the changing nature of privacy as well as the lack of critical thinking and understanding of digital content and authentication of information. I also added this quote from danah boyd:

Why are we so obsessed with the registered sex offender side of the puzzle when the troubled kids are right in front of us? Why are we so obsessed with the Internet side of the puzzle when so many more kids are abused in their own homes? I feel like this whole conversation has turned into a distraction. Money and time is being spent focusing on the things that people fear rather than the very real and known risks that kids face. This breaks my heart.

I feel like I’ve posted about this too many times. 2 years ago, we had few educators using any form of social networks and thus the discussions were few. Today their is more information and we have more educators using Facebook and have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. I’m perplexed about how to shift the conversation away from the fear. Fear is usually attached to the unknown. Most of these parents and teachers simply don’t know and it’s always easier to attach a quick label to the unknown. If it’s presented as a threat to children, well, you know the rest of that story.

Today this happened at the school.

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That’s just not my style. I still haven’t fully comprehended what message was being sent other than don’t add strangers to your Facebook account.  It seemed like a lot of effort to spend on a quick emphasis to something that requires much more context and teaching and modeling. Maybe more discussion will follow. I hope so. But I’m not hopeful.

People

Without trying to list the names of everyone, it’s apparent for most users of social media that face to face gathering times have changed in the past few years. I used to go to conferences and mingle with local colleagues and a few others I’d met a various functions and committees but there wasn’t much of a community. Now we meet people we’ve never seen and can enter in to meaningful discussion since all the banter and small talk takes place  in other spaces.

This conference brings together not only educators and administrators but also IT. I certainly commend our own IT team for focusing on students but not all do. This is a great way to have them understand that their clients are students and it’s a highly complex task to provide safe, secure environments that also enable them to have the access needed to use the tools that help them learn.

Keynotes

I’ve heard David Warlick live a couple of times but I must say this was worth seeing. David is a gifted storyteller but certainly connects to many outside of educational technology.  Carlene captured the essence of it well. It lead to many meaningful conversations and insights for many including my superintendent who said, “I know you’ve been talking about this for years but it’s finally starting to click”. What’s the phrase about being a prophet in your own town?

Being able to provide a keynote with Clarence, Kathy and Darren was truly a treat. Once I get the audio from Rob, I’ll post it but it was a privilege to facilitate these three tell their stories.

Sessions

So many of the sessions dealt with what’s best for students and how does any of this help our students learn more. The phrase “How does the technology support the practices that lead to student achievement” rang through my mind many times. I heard more praise from various sessions than I have at many conferences.

Critcisms

Nothing is perfect and there were a few things that I’d like to see change. Wireless continues to suck. Why? Last year the wireless at another venue was much better. The hotel did not have wireless so someone had to install a temporary system. It was lousy. This has got to be resolved. I would also like to see more built in opportunity to network. Not a big deal for me personally since I have many connections and can steer informal conversations to meet my needs but for many, they need a time and space to ask questions and contribute ideas.  I mentioned the idea of a “linkable” keynote. A killer opening that had many components that could be explored deeper in follow up sessions or simply building an open space style based on the ideas in the keynote and interests of the participants. Then culminating the conference with a sharing time of what was learned and what plans were made.

My life is pretty much an open book. For some that’s just too weird, dangerous or stupid. It works for me.  My network of acquaintances/colleagues/connections and yes, some friends, know a lot of odd things about me.

I received many birthday wishes but David Jakes (I linked to his blog so you’ll all head over and urge him to blog more) started this little beauty:

And the fun began.  I’m not sure I capture them all but I hope so.

For those who  have had the opportunity to observe my online nattering, I can see how some might find it trivial, self-absorbed and even perhaps useless. There’s some truth in that for sure. But I can say that much of this it isn’t far off from the way I approach teaching and learning. Wrapped around the glaze of foolishness lies the belief that you need to invest and embrace a level of vulnerability and be prepared to engage in idle chat in order to build community and in turn truly learn from each other. For me this means sharing silliness, exploring new ways to share and communicate and discovering that being playful and curious about other people actually matters.  I also think this doesn’t necessarily lose you academic credibility, although again, many would write me off because of my overt sharing practices. I hardly care. I’m sure there are other ways to do this but I’m quite happy with how things have worked out for me. Not that I’m seeking power but “the less you share the less power you have.” In a time of economic downturn, I have tons of social capital.

So with that I give you a really neat little gift that from some really cool people. They supplied the gift, I wrapped it up and put it in a box.  That was fun. (FYI, I uploaded this first to youtube but the rendering of the screen captures was pretty unreadable, vimeo does a much better job. There, you learned something)

Birthday Tweets from shareski on Vimeo.

Today, we had about 10 friends over for a little pre-birthday party. My wife called people about 3-4 days ahead of time, spent a good part of Saturday and most of Sunday baking, cleaning and getting ready for our guests. We ate well and had a lot of fun. We likely have these types of events more than most people I know but even at that, we don’t do it weekly.

In praise of the pop-in

The pop is a lost art for most of us today.  Socializing for most of us is pretty structured and planned. We check our calendars and plan a meeting, gathering or event weeks, even months in advance. When we get together and have a great time, we say, “we should do this more often”.  That rarely happens.  Our culture has changed. Bowling Alone is a book by Robert Putnam.

Putnam draws on evidence including nearly 500,000 interviews over the last quarter century to show that we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often.

You can think of many reasons why this is but certainly most of us can nod our head in agreement. The “pop-in” existed because the value of socializing superseded the  busyness and frantic lifestyles that has evolved over the past few years. We’ve devalued socialization and traded it for privacy, achievement and money. We’ve lost a great deal of social capital. This social capital served to strengthen relationships. The line we’ve tried to pawn off to ourselves is that it’s about quality, not quantity. I wouldn’t say that’s a load of crap, but it’s not totally truthful.

It’s not about the media, it’s about the social

I apologize because I can’t remember where I read this (probably on twitter, if you read this and said, please let me know) but this is a big deal. It’s not about the media, but the social. We crave to be social.

Twitter is the ultimate pop-in. You can easily jump in when you have a few minutes. Enter a deep conversation, share a piece of trivia, announce an accomplishment or just say hello.  Don’t over think it. If you do, you’ll drive yourself batty.  Socialization is good, it’s right, it’s human. It’s more about quantity than quality.

I recognize many would cite other behaviours and concerns with time spent online but this is the real reason Facebook, Twitter, et al is gaining so much attention and use. While the pundits might argue that folks should be making more face time, for the most part it’s extremely difficult. This media is the natural evolution of society and helps to solve a huge void in people’s lives.

The real reason of course that we use these mediums, is to be together in person. The value of these tiny bite sized interactions is that it strengthens the bond of our relationships and allows our face time to be much more meaningful.

Can schools learn from the pop-in?

I’m going to suggest that the pop-in for our schools is found in serendipity. Serendipitous learning is desperately needed in our schools. Not that we abandon curriculum or structure, that’s good too. But when classrooms cannot make changes on the fly or take advantage of learning opportunities, we cheat our kids.  With classrooms that use media like ustream, skype or even twitter, they afford their students the chance for informal learning to take place. Their classrooms don’t revolve around these tools but the possibility of learning something unexpected exists. I remember teaching 3rd grade and having the teacher and students next door routinely pop in to share something interesting or something they learned. I kept my door open most of the day. Learning was natural and social.

Learning isn’t always sequential or linear. Sometimes we need an injection of serendipity to spark interest and make connections to other curriculum.  When something out of the ordinary happens, we should have the capacity to respond in some way.  When unexpected company arrived, we didn’t panic, we welcomed them in and enjoyed the conversation. No preparation necessary.

With the advancement of distance education, we may soon see a book called, “Learning Alone”.  I don’t want that. However there is an efficiency involved in online learning that is hard to resist or deny. I’ve never want us to move in that direction which is why I ask teachers, what are you doing in your classrooms that will make your students want to come to school?  Social learning may well prove to be the glue that keeps our schools viable.  The pop-in style of social media might be important to maintain and build relationships.

I don’t know if you can take my analogy too far but  my observation as my wife cleaned the house (I helped too but she did the bulk) was that the conversation or fun wasn’t directly related to the cleanliness of our house or the quality of the food. Don’t get me wrong, we had a wonderful evening and the food certainly added to the fun but it wasn’t required, just something nice to do for friends. But I’d be willing to trade this planned gathering for more informal visits with my friends.

I recognize this may not be the most coherent piece of writing but as these ideas rolled around in my brain, I felt I needed to get it out.

What I have come to realize is that teachers who share are the best teachers. Even better if they choose to share online. Sharing online requires, in most cases some careful thought and consideration since the implications and stakes are much higher.

I was fortunate to spend an hour with some of these outstanding teachers;teachers who have an online presence of some sort and are willing and excited to open up that space for others to join them and participate in their learning. Alec and I are teaching undergraduate courses and are matching up our students with several of these teachers.  Listening to them describe their
classrooms, you can sense their passion and it’s palpable.  They love kids and they love teaching. Many of them made statements about their work as if they are just learning to use these sharing tools and they shouldn’t be seen as leaders. In that respect, they are wrong.

Sharing and meta cognition should be inseparable.  Deep reflectors of their practice  are constantly modifying instruction to make learning more effective. This is not about them using technology, it’s about sharing. I’m not saying you have to share to be a great teacher, I’m saying if you do, you are.  I challenge anyone to prove me wrong.

This group of teachers includes a few that in their last year of teaching, some in huge high schools, in small rural schools,  some teaching in Indian reserves, some Kindergarten teachers and some senior classes. The one thing they have in common is that their classrooms are open to the world. What would our schools be like if every classroom operated this way?

Here’s a link to their spaces for you to check out yourselves.

Carey Pohanka
Chad Brannon
Chris Harbeck
Colleen Glaude
Donna Fry
Eldon Germann
George  Mayo
Jaqlyn Schmitt
Jeff Whipple
Jennifer Clark Evans
Karen Chichestor
Moira Moritz
Anne Smith
Kristen Leclaire
Kelly Hines
Kyle Stevens
Lois Smethurst
Maria Knee
Mavis Hoffman
Matt Montagne
Jessica Lipsky
Debby Cothern & Michelle Ellis
Tracey Ruark and Cathy Daniels
Nellie Duetsch
Sandi Kerney
Seth Dickens
Sheri Edwards
Sophie Rosso
Stephanie Affield
Stephanie Olson
Susan Carter Morgan
Paula White
Teryl Magee

Teachers from Chet's Creek Elementary in Jacksonville talk to our students

Thank you all for sharing.

Images: Teachers introduce themselves
http://www.flickr.com/photos/holtsman/3235968267

It was a great conversation with Alec, Rick and Rob. One of my favourites. To think it’s year five. Wow. I’m particularly satisfied with the dicussion around Alec’s flickr issue. I think Alec in particular provides a nice response to the issue.

Shownotes

While everyone has their own construct about it, there’s no doubt it’s becoming a significant medium for many individuals and organizations.  Personally, I have to use some restraint as many conversations are only “twitter deep.” For me, that means I respect the limitations of a 140 character space to be limited to superfluous ideas at best.  Certainly a great link can be posted but the minute a tweet engages people in a meaningful way that requires any degree of unwrapping, my immediate thought is “get a room”.  Frustrations mount as complex ideas are squeezed into a simple text messaging tool.

Exhibit A
Discussions like this are not suited well to twitter or even plurk.  I appreciate how Darren has tried to capture it but again, the responses are disjointed and the limitations likely make it a less than satisfying learning experience. Even as I read the tweets, it requires so much clarification that it’s difficult to engage.

Exhibit B

Instead, I like how Will got frustrated in a recent discussion on literacy and offered an alternative.

My fear is that so many people begin their entry into social media via microblogs and rarely move beyond that.  Twitter cheapens deep discussions. You can only go “twitter deep”. Blogs or other unrestricted spaces offer a less time sensitive, character restrictive space to explore ideas in depth. You can go “blog deep.” Both are great spaces but there isn’t a one-size-fits-all space for every purpose. The idea of small pieces loosely joined is still valid. Many newcomers to social media are trying to cram all forms of thinking and sharing into a single space such as Facebook or Twitter. I don’t think that’s a good idea.  While I always encourage people to start somewhere, I don’t mean for them to stay in one space.  So if you’re new to social media you might want to think about adding another space to your identity.  Take the idea tossed around in twitter and take it deep in your own space. Even if you only decontruct it yourself or have a couple of comments I think you’ll find that a more satisfying experience that trying to follow short snippets of insight. Twitter is great but a steady diet of twitter is like only ordering appetizers. At some point, you’ll want a main course.

Image: ‘SMS: Text Messaging Gets Redesigned‘
www.flickr.com/photos/85515841@N00/706401207

Last night was so much fun. We had our final class and it was face to face. We had to create a slideshow with fifteen slides each lasting fifteen seconds. It was challenging but lots of fun. Our presentations were all about what we learned over the semester and thinking back really put the semester in perspective for me. Wow have I ever learned a lot.

There is no way I would have stood up in front of a room full of my peers (younger people yes, same or older no) and did a presentation. But last night I felt no fear at all. I know everyone so well even though I have hardly ever seen most of them face to face.

I think the best part of last night was just sitting around eating pizza and talking. I think that is why face to face is so great there’s just something more to talking to someone that way then there is online. I think the people you meet face to face are sometimes very different from the online people. At least my impressions of people were different than the person I actually met. (I never really look at the about me pages just what pops up in my google reader) It’s interesting, I wonder what impression my blog gives about me?

Another student told me:

…this is my only university class that I know every student by name, and know at least one important thing about them.  This is really weird, because I wouldn’t have been able to do that even in high school.

Social learning is a clearly stated goal in my class. The fact that they know each other better stems solely from the ability to connect and learn beyond the walls of the classroom. In addition, although I may not have outlined specifically how they should engage in learning socially, they all were able to provide reflection indicating they were at least aware of its power.

My own experience with meeting people at conferences and having great conversations outside of the formal sessions reaffirm that face to face is good and necessary and in many ways real reason and value of a physical place where people gather. I believe it was Kevin Honeycutt who said, “it was the first time I’d met someone’s brain before I met their face”.  Being together is really what my class is about. But the richness of conversations and willingness to be open and transparent is difficult to foster in 3 hours a week where much of that learning is teacher directed. I think the model developed by Jonathon Bergmann and Aaron Samms is one we’ll likely see more of in the future. Coming to school to do homework and learning with others.

As is typical, this post begins with reading Will. While I can’t say to any more certainty what the future of school will completely look like, I do believe that the opportunity for students to learn from each and others will be more than just rhetoric which it pretty much is now.

People in the same room talking, sharing, laughing and learning happens because of numerous hours spent getting to know each other and their brains away from class.

Here’s an idea: put a sticky note on your desk that says, “What do you want to share today?” I’m not kidding. Then, if anything interesting comes your way: Share It! The easiest way to both start and keep sharing is by using different kinds of social software applications. Your first meme you want to share may be small, but you can amplify it with new technologies.

This is one reason twitter is so popular. Within a short period of time, you can build a network and reach an audience.  By the way, if you’re still not using twitter, check out this link, courtesy Matthew Tabor.

…Sharism is not Communism, nor Socialism. As for those die- hard Communists we know, they have often abused people’s sharing nature and forced them to give up their rights, and their property. Socialism, that tender Communism, in our experience also lacked respect for these rights. Under these systems, the state owns all property. Under Sharism, you can keep ownership, if you want. But I like to share. And this is how I choose to spread ideas, and prosperity.

I’d never heard of Sharism but I’m sure Shareski is a derivative of it that is protected under the use of Creative Commons, or something like that.  The cavaet? The less you share the less power you have.

Image:Sharing